Monday January 31, 2005 4:33 am

Opera’s Vocal Browser

Opera Software will be releasing its newest Internet browser at the end of next month. This latest version talks back to the user. It also accepts voice commands. This version will have many features other than “speaking” the text on a web page for people with vision problems. This browser will also have the ability to magnify text up to 10 times, (no more fine print?) Even though this browser has many features to help visually impaired users, the company says that these features are not just for visually impaired users. Their goal is to take a first step in making human-computer interaction more natural. A nice feature is that, unlike most voice recognition software, Opera does not have to be “trained” in order to recognize the user’s voice. As technology improves, we are seeing steps in making computers smaller, more portable, with less wires, and now more interactive.